The Distance Of Love Poem by Chen-ou Liu

a tanka prose written for my mother


on the phone
I murmur to mother,
"I love you..."
an ocean away
the silence at her end

Coming back home after my first day in grade one, I asked, "Mom, do you love me? "

"I love you this much, " she said with a laugh, holding her hands half a meter apart.

Now, forty years later, living in another country, I still can't fathom the depth of that L word inscribed in my mother's heart.